“Enjoy your dinners,” the hostess said, leaving us menus.
“Have you been here before?” I asked Cathy.
“Yes.”
She was wearing white shorts and a pink blouse. She removed her bag from her shoulder and put it on the bench next to her. It was big enough to hold a gun. Did deputies have to carry their guns while they were off duty?
“Good,” I said, “then you can tell me what a Bloomin’ Onion is.”
“Oh, no,” she said, “you’ll have to taste for yourself.”
The waitress came over at that point and asked, “Can I get you drinks?” Then she saw our drinks and said, “Or another drink?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“So am I,” Cathy said, “but we’ll have a Bloomin’ Onion.”
“Comin’ up,” she said.
“What else do you suggest?” I asked.
“If you haven’t been here before,” she said, “you have to have a steak.”
“Okay,” I said, pushing my menu away, “I’ll have a steak.”
“So will I.”
“How old’s your boy?”
She was looking down at the table, and when I asked, her eyes came up real fast and fastened on my face.
“Three,” she said, frowning slightly. Maybe she wasn’t sure I really cared—or maybe she thought I did, and was surprised.
“What’s his name?”
“Shane.”
“This might sound personal,” I said, “but since I consider this a date, I feel entitled to ask.”
“Go ahead,” she said, “ask.”
“Where’s his father?”
“He doesn’t live here,” she said. “We’re divorced.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “It was the smartest thing I ever did—about eighteen months after the dumbest thing I ever did.”
“But you’re doing all right now?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I’ve got the job I want, and . . .”
“And?”
“And . . .” she said, thinking.
“And there’s room for advancement.”
“Promotion’s always a possibility.”
“I’ll bet you’d like to be a detective, wouldn’t you?”
She looked embarrassed and asked, “Is it that obvious?”
“Well,” I said, “you were very good at asking questions this afternoon, and I knew you didn’t come out with me tonight because of my devastating looks and charm—not that my charm isn’t devastating, but you just hadn’t really experienced it yet.”
She laughed, and it transformed her face. She was far from the deputy I’d first seen standing at the door of my room that afternoon, trying to look so serious.
“I’ll experience it fully tonight, I bet,” she said.
“Well, I’m going to give it my best shot.”
The Bloomin’ Onion came. It was a huge onion sliced so that it resembled a flower in bloom. You picked the petals and dipped them into the cup of dressing in the center.
“This is delicious,” I said, and she nodded her agreement while removing some dressing from the corner of her mouth with her index finger.
We ordered dinner and another drink each, and exchanged stories while we ate. I told her that I had been a boxer for a while before becoming a full-time detective. She had already told me about her marriage and divorce, and about the job she’d had before this one. I got her to talk about her little boy a bit, and her face really lit up while she did that.
“Do you have any family?” she asked.
“No,” I said, and thought guiltily about my brother, Benny. “I had an older brother, but he . . . he died.” He got blown up in my apartment, is what happened—him instead of me. It’s funny, I always manage to keep that buried inside of me—the guilt, more than the incident. Not that there was anything I could have done, but I always manage to dredge up some guilt that I’m alive and he’s dead.
“I’m sorry,” she said, reaching across the table and putting her hand on my arm. “Did he die violently?”
She was sharp.
“Yes,” I said, “he did.”
She gave my arm a rub and a pat, then removed her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“It was a few years ago,” I said. “He was my only family. Well, he was married at the time, but I haven’t seen Julie—I haven’t seen my sister-in-law in all that time. She, uh, moved away after that.”
My sister-in-law and I had been getting too close for comfort, and when she turned out to be on the dirty end of a case I was working, she left my brother and New York. He was dead half a year later, and then I had no family, at all. . . .
“You have a lot of friends, I bet,” she said.
“A few,” I said, “a few good ones.”
“More than that, I’ll bet,” she said. “You strike me as the kind of man who takes care of his friends.”
I didn’t know how to comment on that. I’ve been told that I don’t see myself the way other people see me. This was probably a classic example. I don’t think I see enough of my friends. . . .
“All right,” I said, “why don’t you ask me some questions over coffee.”
“I’ll ask questions,” she said, “but not here. Let’s go to the Village Inn for dessert.”
I paid the bill, and we went out into the parking lot. She had her own car, and since I had passed the Village Inn on my way to the Outback, I knew where it was. We met there, went inside, and were seated.
She ordered a piece of cherry pie and coffee. I wanted Boston cream pie, but they didn’t have it, so I ordered a piece of chocolate silk.
“I feel badly,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I came out with you so I could ask you some more questions about this afternoon.”
“So why feel badly?”
“I’ve had a wonderful time,” she said. “Now I feel guilty.”
“Nothing to feel guilty about,” I said. “Why do you think I called you for dinner tonight?”
“Why did you?”
“Because I found you very attractive and didn’t want to eat alone,” I said, “but that’s beside the point.”
She blushed, touched her forehead with her fingertips, and said, “Now I really feel bad.”
“That was mean of me,” I said. “Go ahead, ask me anything you want.”
“What did you think of Detective Becker?” she asked.
“Same as you,” I said. “He’s an asshole.”
“Yes,” she said, “but I didn’t always think that.”
“Oh?”
She looked right into my eyes and said, “I dated him for a while, when I first came on the job.”
“I see.”
“It never went anywhere,” she said, “but I felt I had to tell you that.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I mean it when I say it didn’t go anywhere,” she said. “I broke it off with him after a few dates, and he didn’t like it.”
“So he treats you like you’re not there and likes to give you orders.”
“We have orders to cooperate with the detectives,” she said. “He doesn’t have any authority, but I try to cooperate.”
“You mean you put up with his bullshit.”
She laughed and said, “That’s right, I forgot you’re from New York.”
“Look, Cathy,” I said, “let’s get this out of the way. Ask me your questions, and then the next time I call you for dinner, neither one of us has to worry about motives.”
“Fair enough,” she said, “and you will call me again, won’t you?”
“Of course I will,” I said. “I still need a guide, don’t I?”
23
I allowed Cathy to pump me to her heart’s content and felt only slightly guilty each time I had to lie to her. It wasn’t often, really, and they were little lies. Deep down I continued to justify the little lies by reminding myself that I really did
n’t know who the dead guy was or what he was doing dead in my room. I also didn’t know why he had been following me in New York, so bringing that into play would just be muddying the waters.
When she had asked all of the questions she could think of, we left the Village Inn and went out to the parking lot.
“How about a drink?” I asked. “I found this place called Magadan’s Sports Cafe.”
“I know it,” she said, “but it’s late, and I have to work tomorrow.”
“What about the next day?”
“Friday?” she said, frowning, “I’m off—in fact, I’m off for fifty-six hours. Why?”
“Well, I was thinking about what Becker told me about Busch Gardens.”
“Well . . . I’d have to get a baby-sitter for Shane during the day—”
“Bring him.”
“Really? You wouldn’t mind?”
“What would Busch Gardens be without a little boy along?”
She seemed to need time to think it over, so I said, “Look, I’ll call you tomorrow night, and you can give me your answer then.”
“You might even end up too busy to go,” she said.
“That’s possible, too,” I said. “Why don’t we see what happens, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow night?”
“All right,” she said with a nod. “We’ll play it by ear.”
“Sure.”
I walked her to her car, a blue Toyota, a couple of years old.
“Do you have far to go?” I asked.
“No,” she said, opening the door, “it’s not far.”
That sort of defined our new relationship—that and the handshake we shared. She wasn’t so sure about me that she wanted to let me know where she lived, and neither of us was sure enough about each other to share a good-night kiss.
I watched her get in and drive away, then got into my own rented car and drove back to the hotel.
There was a different clerk on duty at the desk, so I just nodded at him and went to my room. Just out of curiosity I looked at the hotel pad that was on the night table by the phone. Were there impressions from a note the previous room guest had taken? No, this pad appeared new, with no pages missing. So what did they do with the used pads? Throw them out? That seemed a waste. In the morning I’d ask my desk clerk about it.
I woke up during the night because I thought I heard a noise. I turned on the light and checked the door, finding that it was still double-locked. I looked out the window, but there was nothing to see. The room overlooked the parking lot behind the hotel. There were a few well-spaced lamps so that there were plenty of dark spots between the cars. I turned off my interior lights and looked out again, but there was still nothing—or no one—to see.
I got back into bed, then got up again, turned on the bathroom light, and closed the door until just a crack of light showed.
I wondered how many grown people slept in hotel rooms with lights on because they weren’t home.
24
It was seven in the morning when I woke the next time. I turned over and tried to go back to sleep, but I never really sleep well in hotel beds. I always wondered how many other people had been on those same sheets before me. I finally got up at 7:20, got dressed, and went downstairs. The clerk who was on duty when I returned to the hotel last night was still there.
“Hi, good morning,” I said to attract his attention. He wore a name tag that said jeremy wyant.
“Can I help you, sir?” he asked in his best professional manner. He was older than the other clerk, probably much more experienced. His eyes looked serious behind his wire-framed glasses.
“Yes, can you tell me when you’re relieved?”
“I finish up at eight, sir,” the man said, frowning. Maybe he thought I was going to ask him for a date.
“And who will come on duty then?”
“I believe that will be Patrick, sir.”
“Is he the same young man who was working yesterday?”
“Yes, he is.”
Now he thought I wanted to ask Patrick out.
“Okay, thanks,” I said.
“Would you like me to take a message for Patrick, sir?”
“No, that’s all right,” I said. “I just want to ask him something about—I just want to ask him something.” It was too complicated to explain.
“Very well, sir. You have a nice day.”
“Thank you.”
I left the lobby, paused in front of Denny’s, then decided not to have breakfast there. I went outside and the weather felt fairly cool and comfortable. It had been in the eighties, but right now it sort of felt like a fall day in New York. I decided that people who lived in Florida were probably early risers to take advantage of the comfortable weather. Notice I didn’t say “Floridians.” I don’t think there are any real Floridians, just “people who live in Florida.”
An acquaintance of mine once moved to Florida from New York and returned a year later. He said it took him eight months to sell their house or they would have returned sooner. One of the main complaints he had was that his oldest boy—about nine, at the time—had trouble in school. Where children will normally pick on the new kid in any class, he said that the kids in his son’s class stayed on him constantly, saying it was because he was “a northerner.”
I said, “Hell, everybody down there’s a transplanted northerner.”
“I know, Miles,” he said, “but they don’t think of themselves that way. We decided to come back. People get scary down there.”
Of course, ask someone who lives in Florida about the possibility of going to New York, and they’d probably tell you, “People are scary up there.”
Go figure.
I decided to have breakfast in the Village Inn, then go from there to the police station to make my statement to Becker.
The Village Inn was busy, but since I was sitting alone and had no preference—smoking or nonsmoking, I just wanted to eat—I was seated right way. I ordered scrambled eggs with country potatoes and ham, and coffee. While I ate, I went over the previous day’s goings-on.
If I had simply found a dead body in my room, and it was someone I hadn’t recognized, then it could have been a coincidence. The fact that I did recognize the body meant that its presence had to have something to do with the case I was working on. If that was so, it meant that the first time I had seen the dead man—Ben Styles—in New York, outside Packy’s, he had probably followed Jerry Meyer there—and then after that he had started to follow me. Whether he followed me to Florida or simply knew I was going there remained to be seen. That the dead man was involved in my search for Sandy Meyer figured, though—it had to. It was too coincidental to be otherwise—and I was not prepared to act on the assumption of coincidence.
Going back to New York, the question was why Styles was following Jerry Meyer. Something was obviously going on here that I didn’t know about, and by accepting Meyer as a client I had stepped into it. Could it be possible that my client had lied to me? Perish the thought that such a thing would occur. I mean, who’d hire a P.I. and then lie to him, right? Only everybody. Even when someone hired a private detective to do a job for them, there’s usually something they don’t even want the investigator to know. What is never clear is why they’d hire one to poke around in the first place if they’ve got something to hide. Give me a good old security check or credit check any day. Dealing with companies was a lot less chancy—but a lot more boring.
Okay, so I had to call Jerry Meyer and confront him with the fact that a dead body had been dropped into my lap. If there was something he was hiding from me, he was going to have to come across, or I was on the next plane back to New York. If he denied knowing anything, I’d have to decide what to do then. If I believed him, I could continue to search for his missing wife while keeping an eye on my back—or I could head back to New York anyway. Whoever had dumped that body in my room didn’t want me in Florida. If they had killed Styles simply to set me up—and why else kill him and dump him in my room?�
��would they stop at trying to kill me next? Was whatever I was going to make off of Jerry Meyer worth risking my life for?
Was any case worth that risk?
25
My day was pretty well set up for me. First to the police station in downtown Tampa to make my statement. After that, back to the hotel to check for messages, call Jerry Meyer and Geneva, and talk to the desk clerk. If there were no messages for me from Sarah Connor, there wasn’t going to be much else I could do. Without knowing where Ray Cortez was, I didn’t have any further moves.
I was going to ask the waiter in the Village Inn how to get downtown until I turned Becker’s card over and saw that he had written directions on the other side. Following them proved to be remarkably easy, and I was soon driving in downtown Tampa, which looked more like the city I had left behind. There were wide streets and tall buildings, and enough foot traffic to show me that I was in the financial and business center of the city.
I found a municipal parking lot and left my Caddy there, then walked to the police station, which was behind the municipal building and across the street from two banks.
Inside I found the traditional big front desk and asked for Detective Becker. I was asked politely to wait, and Becker appeared moments later in a short-sleeved shirt. It was pink, and his tie was yellow; he was generating more heat with his colors than the sun was outside.
“Appreciate your coming in so early,” Becker said. “I’d like to get this statement on the record.”
“Find out anything else about Styles?” I asked as I followed him down a hallway. The building was modern, which probably explained why the walls were a cool blue instead of the more universally traditional police bile green.
“Just the hotel he was staying in,” he said. “A small motel court not far from yours. My partner thinks maybe he was keeping an eye on you.”
“Following me?” I asked.
“Think you would have noticed?”
I phrased my answer carefully.
Hard Look Page 9
